


An Agent Always Ends Up In The Ground

by notoneforreality



Series: QB-B3 007 Fest 2020 [19]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: (i'm not), 007 Fest, 007 Fest 2020, Bond's procilivity for losing weapons, F/F, Friendship, I just think I'm clever, James Bond is Intelligent, M/M, Q Branch, Q Branch is situated in the basement, R's POV, Retirement, Retiring to Q-Branch, Team Q Branch, Weapons, no one dies, this got a little deep whenI wasn't expecting it to, weapons testing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:20:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25242304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notoneforreality/pseuds/notoneforreality
Summary: James Bond has finally retired from active field duty. Now, however, he needs something to occupy his time.Q-Branch is waiting for him.
Relationships: James Bond & R, James Bond/Q, R/Agent Bobby Carter
Series: QB-B3 007 Fest 2020 [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1795726
Comments: 7
Kudos: 123





	An Agent Always Ends Up In The Ground

**Author's Note:**

> Written for--  
> This prompt from the 2020 anon list: Bond's retirement plan - become a Q branch minion (maybe in the garage/weapons testing/idk whichever you feel). Write his first day on the job

There are reminders of the time peppered all over Q-Branch: the big clock on the wall in the main office, the slightly smaller clocks on the walls of every lab and workshop, the clocks on desks, in the corner of computer screens  _ and  _ pinned to the desktop wallpaper, on phone screens, on watches. It’s supposed to help the large number of minions who forget the passage of time when they’re working, an attempt to nudge the more zealous staff into keeping reasonable work hours. In their little den, buried underneath Vauxhall Cross, there are no windows that can indicate the passing day, and so they supplement with an inordinate number of clocks.  


It doesn’t work for Q in the slightest, even though it was his idea, but he’s got reasons for why he doesn't agree with time. R hasn’t got any excuse for her usual determined ignoring of the clocks.

Today though, she watches the clock very closely, watching the hands tick closer and closer to nine o’clock.

At half past eight, Bobby turns up.

“What are you so excited about?” she asks, hopping up to sit on the desk at which R is working. In the corner of her eye, R sees a newer minion stare for a moment, before dragging their attention back to the computer screen in front of them. 

“I don’t believe we have any equipment due to be assigned to you, Double-oh Four,” R says. 

Bobby pouts at her and produces a travel mug — ‘Evil Engineer’ — from behind her back. “Well that’s okay, because I came to return equipment.”

R would like to accept the mug immediately because she’s been here for two and a half hours already and has gotten next to no work done due to her preoccupation with the time, but that’s not how their morning trades work.

“Is that all you have for me, Agent Carter?”

Bobby grins, brilliant and fond, and leans forward to press a kiss to R’s lips. “There was that, too,” she says, before pushing the coffee into R’s hands.

“You’re a wonder,” R says, swigging a huge mouthful of it and making a face. She takes her morning coffee black out of necessity, but it never gets any nicer.

“Please tell that to Tanner,” Bobby says without missing a beat. “He’s complaining about Barcelona, again. It wasn’t even that bad!”

‘It’ was a very close call with possibly catastrophic damage to the Sagrada Familia, and someone in Barcelona has clearly found out about or remembered it because, nearly three months since the last communication, Tanner’s been getting harassing emails about it. R knows this because she was fiddling around in external communications servers yesterday, on a break from fiddling around in internal communications servers. She hums, unimpressed by Bobby’s pretense at innocence.

“Anyway.” Bobby leans back on one hand and grabs a motor with the other, bringing it up in front of her head and squinting at it. “You didn’t answer my question. What are you so excited about?”

After another look at the clock to make sure that it hasn’t magically raced through the next twenty minutes, R pulls open a drawer and pulls out a lanyard. Her own ID card is pinned to her top so that it doesn’t dangle while she’s working, but all the new hires get lanyards.

“We’ve got a new member of staff joining Q-Branch this morning,” she says, swinging the lanyard so Bobby can’t see the ID properly.

“Oh, have you pulled a new super cool leet hacker off the streets?” Bobby’s eyes glitter, and R wonders how long she’s been saving up ‘leet’ to use in conversation. “I didn’t think you’d had a recruitment drive recently.”

They haven’t had a recruitment drive recently, which is why the new arrival is exciting. R considers telling Bobby and letting her get on with whatever brings her into Vauxhall Cross today, and then decides that’s not as much fun. She wraps the lanyard around the ID and shoves it into her pocket.

“Stay and find out,” she says. Keeping Bobby down here will keep her out of trouble and, for once, will let R get more work done. She doesn’t need to watch the clock or the door if a Double-oh is doing it for her, and her girlfriend won’t have time to distract her if she’s distracted watching for the new staff member. “He’s due in at nine.”

Bobby’s eyes go a little glassy and vacant as she runs through things in her head. Whatever she finds in there, it musn’t be time-sensitive, because they brighten again and she grins. 

“I can’t wait to meet him. Where do you want me in the meantime?”

R smothers a laugh and hands Bobby a new handgun prototype, asking her to disassemble and reassemble to check for ease of assembly and prep time. Then she turns back to where she’s working on the much more interesting task of designing bullets with different functions.

Relieved of the need to check the time constantly, R completes the technical sketches for a bullet with an electrical charge, and is just pulling up a new file on her tablet when Bobby calls out.

“Oi, Jamsie, what are you doing here? I thought you left, or are you back from retirement for the seventh time?”

When R looks up, James Bond is loitering in the door to the office. He’s wearing a slightly-less-expensive-than-usual suit, with his hands shoved into his pocket. She grins at him, then looks pointedly at the clock, which is just ticking over onto the hour.

He sets his shoulders and strides across the room towards her desk.

A couple of the relatively recent hires — old enough to recognise Bond, new enough to not yet be familiar with him — stare as he walks through, but the newest don’t give him more than a glance; the last batch of staff arrived while he was on medical leave pending retirement from the Double-oh Program, so there’s no reason for him to hold their interest. Most of the minions keep their heads down and get on with their work. Bond has been haunting Q-Branch for about as long as the current Q has been in charge of it.

The trajectory of his walk is leading to Q’s office, but Q is working on an important project that needs to be finished by tomorrow, which means that R is in charge today.

She clears her throat. Bond’s eyebrows jump for a second, but he changes his angle so that he’s making his way to her desk, a little in front and to the left of Q’s office.

“James Bond, reporting at oh-nine-hundred for induction.”

Bobby nearly falls off R’s desk. “You’re the new minion?” 

“Just because I’m no longer up for field duty, doesn’t mean I can’t still be of service to MI6,” Bond says, and Bobby laughs in his face. He rolls his eyes.

Even after several years, R still doesn’t quite understand the relationship that the two of them have, beyond the fact that it seems to exist in the space between colleagues, friends, and, oddly, siblings.

“Oh sure,” Bobby says, “but how much service are you going to be down here? I thought you had bullets for brains.”

“I’ll put a bullet in your brain,” Bond says, and it’s the most childish thing R has ever heard him say.

“No threats of physical violence in the workplace, please,” she says before Bobby can retaliate. “Agent Carter, don’t you have somewhere to be?”

Bobby makes a face, but slips off the desk and sets the gun down. “Yes, ma’am,” she says, reaching up for another kiss before heading for the door. Just as she reaches it, she turns around and blows a kiss at Bond. “Good luck in the new job, Jamsie!” And then she disappears into the corridor.

R is a professional and does not laugh at her girlfriend’s nonsense. Nor does Bond, although a smile tugs at his lips.

“Well, you’ll need this,” R says, pulling the ID from her pocket and handing it over. “Getting into this office doesn’t require a pass because this is where we have most of our interactions with other branches, but for any labs, workshops, ranges beyond this, you’ll have to scan your card at the door.”

She finishes saving and backing up her files, and then sets down the tablet. She won’t be needing it for the tour.

When she walks off, Bond follows without question. R takes him along the regular tour route, but switches out her usual script for something more personalised and technical; Bond already knows a lot of the things they tell new staff, and the odd reference to his own experiences turn his expression pleased and chagrined by turns.

He has reason to be concerned. Q-Branch work very hard on their equipment, and there’s an open file spreadsheet of agents and their ability to return equipment, with variables for how much is returned and in what condition. It’s edited every time an agent comes back from a mission, and then filtered to show who has the best and worst track record. 

Agent James Bond is leading the casualty record by a significant margin. R knows; she checked the file yesterday.

The minions would never endanger an agent’s life in retaliation for not taking care of equipment, but for one, Bond’s life no longer depends on the equipment, and for two, Bond is the newest member of staff in Q-Branch, which means he’s at the bottom of the pecking order.

“You’ll be working in here,” R says, when they reach the test range. She’d seen the look Bond had given the garages when they’d walked through, but she’d also seen the absolute mess Bond had made of an engine when Q had given him an old Fiesta to play around with.

The range, at least, keeps Bond’s interest.

“What will I be doing?” he asks, eyes roaming over the space. In a glass room at the far end, Constance Arbor is fiddling with a football, rolling it around on the floor with her foot and some degree of trepidation.

“Testing weapons, mainly,” R says, “But it’s up to your department supervisor.”

Connie slides the door open, then kicks the ball with all her might and flies out of the room, slamming the door closed behind her. The ball hits the far wall, bounces back against another and then rolls to the middle of the floor.

There’s a beat.

The explosion is bright and fiery, the sound of it muted but not silenced by the blast proof plexiglass. Extractor fans kick in with a rattle and whine and the smoke clears, leaving a patch of scrap leather in the middle of the room. 

Connie whoops, gleeful, and jumps around in a circle, only catching sight of R and Bond on her second revolution. She stops and clears her throat, brushing invisible dust off her skirt.

“Ah, Mr Bond, my newest minion,” she says. “Welcome to the testing range. I’m your direct supervisor, but R will actually be supervising both of us, today.”

It had almost caused an argument, for about two minutes, when Connie had thought that R was undermining her authority, thought she couldn’t do her job without oversight. Then R had explained who the new arrival was going to be, and that the supervision was purely for her own entertainment, and Connie had laughed for five minutes and promised to provide the fun.

Bond cuts a look across at R with a hint of suspicion in his eyes. R looks back at him, keeping her face neutral. After a moment, Bond looks back to Connie.

“First off, I’m afraid it’s standard protocol to check your ability with the weapons,” Connie says, not sounding very sorry at all, and then she leads them to a table filled with various guns. “Ten standing, ten kneeling, ten prone.”

There are a lot of guns on the table. Bond looks at them, and then at Connie.

“With which gun?”

Connie beams, bright and innocent. “All of them.”

Ear defenders are located and put on, and then Connie and R retreat to a distance from which they can watch Bond shoot and sign behind his back.

“He looked so irritated when I said all of them,” Connie signs while Bond is occupied assembling the first gun, making the ‘all’ big, her eyes wide.

R grins. “How long are you planning to give him a hard time?”

“What are you saying?” Connie signs, her questioning expression almost ruined by the matching grin that’s threatening to break open on her face. “I would never be so unprofessional.”

By this time, Bond has moved to face the target. He fires off the requested thirty shots, all of them keeping within the central three rings, then steps back over to the table and runs through disassembly.

“He’s good with the guns,” Connie says in an undertone that R almost misses through the ear defenders.

“There’s a reason we wanted him down here,” R replies. “People might even forgive him after a while.”

This time, Connie’s grin is wicked. “Wait until the first weapon he spends three weeks testing is dropped into a gorge and barely makes it into the after-action report.”

It’s a fitting punishment. R suspects Q and M had been thinking along similar lines when they arranged the transfer. That, and the fact that if Bond has to spend more than a week in actual retirement, Q would go home to find the flat half burned down or the sofa slashed to pieces or the headboard used for target practise.

“What’s the most ridiculous excuse you’ve heard?” Connie signs, when the report of Bond’s second gun drowns out any speech. “I think mine was a taser flushed down a toilet.”

R stares at Bond’s back, then turns to Connie with a flat look. “A gun eaten by a komodo dragon.” She has to fingerspell the animal, because she doesn’t know the sign, but it’s worth it for Connie’s face.

“Who-?” Connie starts to ask, but her finger doesn’t even make one circle before she’s staring at Bond.

As he rises from his ten prone shots, she puts her hands on her hips and says, “A komodo dragon?” in the most incredulous tone R has ever heard.

Bond startles, and looks between them, narrowing his eyes at R. “The casino had pets.”

“A casino had komodo dragons?” Connie says in the same tone. “Why the fuck...?”

“Rich people,” R says.

Connie nods, “Oh, right.”

Bond looks like he’s going to argue, but R fixes him with a look. She knows he’s had the same argument with Q on several occasions and he will not win it any easier with her as an opponent.

“I could have been eaten by the komodo dragon,” he points out.

All it earns him is two shrugs.

“But you weren’t,” R says, unsympathetic, “and mine and Q’s lovely palm coded Walther was.”

Bond makes a face that’s almost a pout. R doesn’t break. Bond goes back to his shooting.

Before he picks up the last gun, he stalks down the length of the range and replaces the target with a new sheet of paper, bringing the old one back with him. As he starts firing, R frowns, watching the bullet holes scatter in a far less precise manner than they had before.

The last shot rings out and R pulls her ear defenders off, peering at the target. The holes spell BOND on the paper, and her lips twitch.

Connie beams at him and he smiles back, until she leads him to another table with yet another gun. Bond eyes it warily.

“This is a prototype,” Connie says, “which is what you’ll be working with most often. It’s still in development, and we want your input on how it feels to handle the weapon, and any details you think could be improved upon. This particular model is one in which we’re exploring various conductors in order to direct an electrical charge.”

For a moment, R frowns. She’s been working on electricity in firearms and isn’t aware of any other similar projects. Then Connie winks at her and curiosity replaces the confusion.

Bond picks up the weapon and something sloshes as he bounces it in his hands.

“The weight’s unusual,” he says.

A tablet appears from somewhere in Connie’s arms and she scribbles something on it with a stylus. 

“Good note,” she says, as though she isn’t perfectly capable of discovering that herself. “Now, if you don’t mind?” She gestures to the nearest target.

Bond gets himself into position, shifting his stance and raising the gun, then pulls the trigger.

A jet of water streams out of the muzzle.

Next to her, R is sure she hears Connie snort with laughter, but when she turns, her face is perfectly earnest and innocent.

“What?” Bond says, eloquently.

“Oh, didn’t you know? Water is an excellent conductor,” Connie says. “We’re trying to get it to carry a charge. Ideally one we can switch off so it can be passed off as a kids toy.”

She babbles on for a little while, encouraging Bond to take another shot every so often, and then apparently taking notes on her tablet. R watches, bemused by the situation, and says nothing. She trust Connie.

So must Bond, because he keeps following her instructions, doing everything from shaking the gun to blowing down the muzzle.

After half an hour, Connie excuses him to go to the bathroom.

“I didn’t know you were working with water as a conductor,” R says.

Connie turns her brilliant beaming smile on R, eyes glittering. “Oh,” she says, “we’re not.”

When Bond comes back, Connie continues putting him through his paces with the water pistol. At one point, when Bond looks like he might follow the komodo’s example and eat the gun if Connie says it’s not working one more time, R frowns.

“Is this not a bit much?” she signs, eyebrows pulled down low.

For a moment, Connie is serious. She shakes her head and signs, “Training.”

R considers and then nods. It makes sense that Connie wants to teach Bond what she’s looking for, even if it is a little mean and a lot funny to do so with a dud weapon. Although, better a dud weapon that isn’t designed to be any use at all, than a dud weapon that ends up blowing up in Bond’s hands on his first day in Q-Branch.

It would be typical, for Bond to survive as the longest serving agent, only to be blown up on his first day working inside Vauxhall Cross itself.

She leaves Bond to Connie’s mercy once, a little after noon, as she goes to pray, and returns to find them still working with the same gun. As the clock on the wall is ticking closer to one o’clock, R decides to magnanimously rescue Bond from the tedium of trying to fix a weapon that wasn’t broken in the first place.

There are several lunch rooms scattered throughout Vauxhall Cross, but R knows that Q tends to go up to wherever Bond is, if he isn’t just eating in his office. So she leads Bond back through the corridors to the Q-Branch break room, opening the door and presenting the chaos beyond.

Within three seconds of them arriving, someone shrieks and flames leap up, quenched immediately by the speedy application of an ever-present extinguisher, followed by a lecture about how there's no tinkering in the break room, Sam’s hands on his hips and face fierce as he berates the minion.

Bond blinks

“What?” R grins. “You didn’t think you lot had all the fun upstairs?”

Thanks to lunch dates with Bobby, R knows that lunch upstairs is not nearly as fun as it is downstairs.

“Oi, R,” someone shouts, “what are you doing fraternising with the enemy?”

Before R can reply, someone else is shouting back, “He’s not the enemy anymore, he’s one of us, now!”

“One of us, one of us, one of us!” The chant starts quietly and gains volume, along with a beat of hands on tables and legs. A baby minion close to the front of the looks vaguely terrified.

R rolls her eyes and flicks two fingers up at the whole room, which causes a ripple of laughter that eventually dies down into the usual babel of voices.

Winding his way towards them, Sam catches R’s eye, and then comes to a halt in front of Bond.

“Sam Locke,” he says, offering his hand. Bond clasps his hand and shakes it, a pleasant smile on his face. Sam smiles back. “Sorry about the madness. You get used to it.”

“I’m sure I will,” Bond says. R narrows her eyes at him. She recognises that voice, has heard it often enough from Bobby. It’s not so much ‘I’m sure I’ll get used to the madness’ as ‘I can’t wait to add to the madness’.

She considers warning the minions, then decides that she’s not a babysitter and they can look out for themselves. At least Bond will fit in.

He hasn’t brought lunch, which R supposes means Q has forgotten lunch, again. She shows Bond where everything is in the kitchen and they make sandwiches. Bond cuts his into triangles and R raises her eyebrows but carries on making the two sandwiches on her plate.

Sandwiches finished, she hands Bond over to the mercy of Sam and goes to deliver Q’s lunch. 

Q surfaces from his coding haze bleary eyed and confused, blinking at R. “Oh, is it lunch time already?”

“Eat food,” R says as an answer. 

He takes the sandwich and makes it most of the way through the first half before he jumps, starting out of his chair.

“Shit,” he says, “It’s James’ first day. I completely forgot.”

With on hand on his shoulder, R pushes him back down. 

“I’ve been looking after him, I promise. You need to eat and then finish that program for M so you can go home at a reasonable hour and sleep.”

The face Q makes at her might have been cute on a four year old.

“He’s fine,” R says. “He’s a big boy, and I’m keeping an eye on him. Eat, finish your work, and you can go home nad have a nice conversation in bed about everything he got up to today.”

That seems to placate Q, who finishes the first half of his sandwich and then looks up expectantly. She tosses him a bottle of water she grabbed on the way out of the kitchen and promises to get Sam to deliver tea in half an hour.

“Thanks,” Q says, just as she’s leaving, and she turns just enough to flash a warm smile in his direction, casting a last glance over his curved figure, picking at his lunch.

He works too hard. At least if Bond sticks around, R will have an ally, a new member of the Look-After-Q Club. Most of the minions are involved in it to some capacity, but Bond will be a powerful weapon for them.

She closes the door behind her and heads back to the break room, where Bond is chatting with Sam about football, which she hadn’t been aware that either of them followed. Reclaiming her own plate from where Sam’s been keeping it safe, she slides into a chair at their table and eats, content to listen to their conversation.

After lunch, Connie takes pity on Bond and gives him equipment that R knows are definitely being developed by the team. He tries a ring with a tiny buzzsaw built in, and a belt with a buckle that pulls out to reveal a sabre with a current run through it, and is given the treat of taking shots at a camera button to test its durability.

He seems to take great delight in the last task, even catching up the sabre belt to shock the button. It’s the last one that fries the camera’s circuits, and Bond actually looks startled for a moment, glancing across to Connie and R.

“Sorry,” he says, but Connie is grinning and furiously scribbling on her tablet, muttering about reinforcing the plastic insulation and offsetting the added bulk that would come as a result.

“I thought I wasn’t supposed to break the equipment,” he says to R.

“You break the equipment in here so that the agents and the people they fight don’t break the equipment in the field.”

“Yeah!” Connie cheers. “That’s why it’s so great that we got you. If equipment can survive James Bond, it can survive anything.”

Bond’s eyebrows pull together. “What does that mean?”

“It means you have a reputation,” R says before Connie can answer. She wants the spreadsheet to be a surprise, later. A couple of the minions have been making plans to present an award, and R has been kindly pretending that they’re doing a good job of keeping it secret. Q hasn’t noticed, but they have a deal where he keeps an eye on the tech and she keeps an eye on the humans and together they keep the branch running nicely. 

For a second, Bond looks like he’s going to protest and R levels a glare at him. Then he at least has the grace to look sheepish about it. 

Bond goes back to his work with Connie and R retreats to a far corner to watch them properly this time, instead of watching and laughing at Bond with Connie next to her. He’s a good fit, for down here, knows what he’s doing and is smarter than anyone gives him credit for. The few minions who have been through got along well with him, too, with only the slightest hint of hostility for the ex-Double-oh Seven until he mentioned angles for a shot or weight affecting a blade, and then they’d launch into a discussion and he’d only look slightly lost.

“Everyone down here is a genius,” he says to R, when Connie’s gone off to fetch something or other. There’s an odd note to his voice, and R tilts her head.

Internally, she thinks of the time Connie ran face first into a glass door, the time Sam burnt spaghetti in the kitchenette because he didn’t know it required water, the three times Q ended up thoroughly knotted in cables and needed assistance to untie him. She runs through a highlights reel of the nonsense and chaos that goes on everyday in Q-Branch, because going over every incident would take far too long. Externally, she says in a careful voice, “Everyone down here is very intelligent.”

There’s a moment in which he doesn’t quite get it, when he opens his mouth to say something, and then his posture changes, softens. 

“Thanks,” he says, quiet.

It’s the first time R has ever looked at Bond and realised how old he is. For an agent who’s just retired in the past three months, he’s practically ancient. His hair is silver, his face worn and creased, soft like paper folded and unfolded too many times. There’s a curve to his shoulders, like he’s been carrying the weight of Britain’s international security alone, and the way he moves is stiff, sometimes.

Part of her wonders how many times he’s been told that he’s intelligent, or whether his brain has always landed him in M’s office, being berated for not following procedure. He could never have survived so long in the service without quick thinking and smart decisions, the ability to improvise tactics on the fly. She wonders if he even realises that’s what’s kept him safe so long, or whether he believes people when they tell him he’s a blunt instrument and that’s how he’s lasted.

Then R thinks about the surprising amount of time they’ve spent interacting with each other outside of work. Between Bobby and Q, she’s friend-adjacent with him twice over, and they’ve had their share of pub nights, movie nights, Bobby’s crazy picnic afternoons, and Q’s unfailingly disastrous games tournaments. She knows that she’s had more intimate conversations on more occasions with Bond than the couple of friends she’s considered close enough to stay in contact with after uni. She also knows — although it comes as a sudden realisation — a lot about Bond, as he must know a lot about her. 

All of this and more flashes through her mind like electricity through wire, lightning quick, and she takes a deep breath. 

Then she shrugs and says, casually, “Friends make sure you know the important things about yourself.”

A still moment makes her think she’s misstepped, that he only sees her as his boyfriend’s friend and his friend’s girlfriend. 

But a corner of his mouth quirks and when he says, “Are we friends?” he’s laughing, the creases by his eyes deep and worn but so warm, so soft. 

“If you keep that up, I might reconsider,” she says. She thinks of the four of them sprawled on the back row of the N86 bus a month ago, she and Q babysitting their drunk partners, everyone grinning and loose and content. “You should count yourself lucky; being your friend means I keep your secrets.”

“What secrets would they be?” 

Their job is a dangerous place in which to trade on secrets, but Bond is grinning outright and R is only just keeping her smile under control. 

“Where you hide the remote when you want to trick Q into sleeping, for one,” she says. 

Bond actually laughs at that, and R grins back at him. 

The rest of the day goes faster and easier. Connie comes back with an assortment of reinforced materials and sets them up along the range for Bond to have at with his choice of gun. R gets involved, this time, joining Connie in exclaiming over the data and coaxing Bond into sharing his insight more often. All three of them are astounded by a mostly-silk creation that withstands both bullets and the knife Bond takes to it when they move on to testing against blades, and R makes a note of the name attached to the project in order to talk to them properly about it later. 

By the time they leave the range, Bond has won Connie over completely, and the walk back to the main office pases with cheerful conversation. 

Bobby and Q are waiting for them, Q sat at R’s desk and Bobby sat on it, as she had this morning. R catches a mention of Dungeons and Dragons and wonders how long it will be before they have a campaign running. She doesn’t say anything, though, just grins as Bobby glances up and spots them, waving with a bright grin on her face.

Connie disappears off in the direction of the break room and R and Bond wander over to their partners. James steps behind Q on the chair and drapes his arms over Q’s shoulders; R leans against the table, against Bobby.

“So, how was your day?” Bobby asks.

R looks up at Bond and sees him looking back at her. Then he smiles.

“It was good.”

There are reminders of the time peppered all over Q-Branch, and Bond has a watch on his wrist that R can read even at this angle. It’s past the time they were supposed to finish their shift, coming up on six o’clock.

“Well,” she says, “I think that deserves a celebration. Pub?”

The four of them share a look, but it’s Bond who nods. “Pub,” he says.

So they go.

**Author's Note:**

> Keep notes:  
> \--so uh I'm not sure if this is quite what the prompt was asking for? but I enjoyed it so I hope you do, too  
> \--CarteR rights  
> \--Bond pls you have friends stop being a lonely idiot  
> \--now I really want to write more of these four being freinds so maybe look out for that?  
> 


End file.
